Hemingway's book title was accurately evocative--the Green Hills of Africa. We've been so fortunate to have many experiences on the Dark Continent: a single-malt scotch around the fire in a private tented camp in the Serengeti and Masai Mara for the migration, and the enormity of seeing hundreds of thousands of wildebeests as they crash into the Mara River. The amazing Ngorongoro Crater, giraffes and thorn trees in the mist at dawn, tracking rhino on foot in Namibia, eco-luxury in the broad Okavango Delta of Botswana, roaring Victoria Falls, the vast herds of elephants in Chobe National Park, even vaster herds of zebras and antelope in the immense Etosha Salt Pan, walking safaris in Zambia and Zimbabwe, up close and personal trekking rare silverback gorillas in Uganda and Rwanda.

Relaxing beaching at Mombasa, the exotic Isle of Madagascar, elegant Capetown, with the fabulous Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens, the wine country of Stellenbosch, and the intensity of the Apartheid Museum and Soweto in Johannesburg.

And in north Africa, the exotic maze of Marrakech, eating at outdoor foodstalls in the Jema el Fna, buying dates like gems in the souk in Fez, snow over the top of the High Atlas mountains on the way to the desert, the incredible ancient city of Ouarzazate in the desert, Timbuktu, the last outpost of the desert, and wonderful Roman ruins in Libya.